Background: As the popularity of Scuba diving (diving with self contained
underwater breathing apparatus) continues to grow, scientists are
better able to determine what the long-term effects on the human body,
the group at high risk for adverse effects is professional divers making repeat
deep dives with shortened decompression times. The most wellknown.
injuries of diving are dysbaric osteonecrosis, hearing loss, and
permanent neurological deficits, usually the result of a decompression accident;
these effects may occur without decompression incident or injury.
Reports of cognitive dysfunction and damage to the liver, retina, and
heart of the diver with no history of decompression sickness are now
emerging, these symptoms may occur gradually and away from the dive
site, physicians should be aware of the signs and symptoms related to
adverse events of diving in order to minimize its morbidity and mortality.
Objectives : to detect the effect of scuba diving on the hearing threshold
of sport divers who have no history of excessive noise exposure or of
diving-related inner ear damage.
Patients and Methods : Thirty of sport divers were inclurlpd in our
study compared with thirty control group of non divers, both groups were
subjected to clinical assessment, tympanometry, pure tone artrliometery.
Result (s) : Divers group shows significant difference in sensory neural
hearing loss at high frequency 4KHz,6K1-fz,81c1-Iz,while there were no significant
difference in low frequency at 0.51{1-izylKHz,21QHz.
Conclusion: Sport diving is risky for long term diving as it affect inner
ear causing high tone sensory neural hearing loss, follow up is advised
for hearing sport divers especially the professionals. |
